


A Natural Inclination

by luninosity



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Beards (Facial Hair), Consensual Kink, Daddy Kink, Dom/sub Play, Emotions, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Fluff and Smut, Kink Negotiation, Love Confessions, M/M, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 08:08:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1771873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian knows that Chris wants him. It’s about time one of them did something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Natural Inclination

**Author's Note:**

  * For [straddling_the_atmosphere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/straddling_the_atmosphere/gifts).



> At one point I thought this was going to be short... *laughs hollowly* 
> 
> Title from Dean Martin’s “Me ’n You ’n the Moon.” As ever, no harm intended, purely for fun.

Sebastian knows that Chris thinks of him as the sweetest kid on the planet. Chris has said so. Out loud. Repeatedly.  
  
Sebastian also knows that Chris wants him. Has wanted him, in fact, throughout the filming of the first movie, and now this second one, and all the associated press and premiere parties. He knows how badly Chris wants to take all that sweetness and turn it inside-out and filthy and despoiled. He’s seen it, read it, _felt_ it, in Chris’s body language: big hand stroking Sebastian’s chest, heavy arm draped over Sebastian’s shoulders, obvious bulge only growing more so beneath Chris’s suit trousers when Sebastian looks up at him through lowered eyelashes—  
  
But Chris never does anything. Never asks. Never acts. Sometimes even blushes, pink staining those Captain America cheeks, and turns away.  
  
And Sebastian wants to scream.  
  
Even more so when Chris shows up at the _Winter Soldier_ premiere with a neatly grown and tidy beard. Dark hair and dark facial hair and he looks _older_ , mature and in control and ready to command a roomful of reporters or, hell, stockbrokers or lawyers, or maybe a room with just one other person, one person who’d willingly drop to his knees and put both hands behind his back and lick his lips at the first hint of command from that Boston-sunrise voice—  
  
Oh God. He’s staring. And the expression on his face must be cause for concern, because Chris stops waving to the closest squealing fans and literally shoulders people out of the way—those Steve Rogers shoulders again, and oh Sebastian would be lying if he tried to claim those flexing muscles weren’t lighting sparks along his spine—and reaches for him.  
  
Sebastian opens his mouth. No sound emerges. All he can think is, Chris’s hand, Chris’s hand _on him_ , on his chest, oh God, running up and down his _body_ —  
  
Chris’s eyes’re all worried intent blue, tracking the movement of his own hand like he’s checking for injuries. Concerned. Kind. “Sebastian? Everything okay?”  
  
“Ah,” Sebastian manages, a little weakly. He’s forgotten English words. Possibly he’s forgotten what words _are_. That big hand is patting his chest. Squarely over his left nipple.  
  
“Hey.” Chris stops patting—Sebastian just barely doesn’t whimper—and instead wraps the arm around him, firm and supportive. This is only a different form of torture. “You look…kind of not okay. Need to sit down? Water?”  
  
“Oh…no…I’m…”  
  
“If you’re about to say fine,” Chris says conversationally, steel glinting underneath, “don’t even try it, kid, I have a brother _and_ two sisters, I know better.”  
  
Sebastian closes his mouth. Obediently.  
  
Well. _That_ was an unfortunate mental choice of adjective. He bites back the whimper again.  
  
“Right,” Chris says, and steers him out of the press mob and off the red carpet and through a side door and into a room that looks like it’s been merrily stockpiling floral-brocade chairs against a coming interior-décor apocalypse. “Sit. Will you be okay for just a sec if I go find you water?”  
  
“I…no, I’m fine, I mean—I’m really fine. _Promit_ —I promise.” He meets Chris’s eyes. The arousal’s now warring with rising embarrassment, and losing by a hairsbreadth. He doesn’t want Chris to worry about him, for fuck’s sake.  
  
He would quite like Chris to take care of him, but that requires a different scenario altogether. One in which they’d have far fewer clothes and far more blueberry-flavored lube and ideally a bed, though he’d settle for one of the terrifyingly flowery chairs at this point.  
  
Academic, in any case. Chris doesn’t want to. Chris wants him, but doesn’t want to—to do that. With him.  
  
Suddenly there’s a spark of anger— _why not, what more do you want, why am I not good enough when you obviously want_ —coiled into the other two emotions. But, looking at Chris’s face, he can’t sustain it.  
  
Chris is hovering, kneeling beside him, hand warm on his shoulder. The concern’s genuine. Heartbreaking.  
  
“I’m all right,” Sebastian says. “Go on. No premiere without Captain America. The world needs you.” And the anger drains away into hollowness, inside. Chris must have reasons. Of course Chris has reasons.  
  
Of course Chris is too _good_ for him, because Chris Evans is a good person, a person who cares for friends in trouble, who puts on a smile for interviewers through painful anxiety attacks, who probably has never had fantasies about using his calmly stylish suit accessories to tie Sebastian to a bed and fuck him until he’s dripping with Chris’s come, sore and stretched and well-used _everywhere_ and _begging_ to be allowed his own release.  
  
Chris might have some desire for him, Sebastian’s fairly certain of that—he’s good at knowing when men desire him—but that particular fantasy’s unlikely to’ve ever entered that generous Boston-boy heart, much less made a permanent home for itself there.  
  
“The world can have Captain America,” Chris announces. “You’re stuck with me. Sorry. Look, I know what a circus premieres can be, and something this scale, if you’re not used to—oh fuck me that came out insulting, Chris, you moron—I just meant—”  
  
“I know what you meant. It’s fine.” It is. They both know they’ve had somewhat different careers. Chris is trying to help. To be understanding in the middle of an overwhelming situation.  
  
Chris is of course exactly wrong about why the situation’s overwhelming, but the care is kind of nice nonetheless. Not as if Sebastian can admit the truth, anyway.  
  
The storage room’s very quiet. All the chairs tilt blooming fuchsia-and-green clouds in to listen.  
  
“I know you’re not…” Chris hesitates. Keeps the hand on his shoulder. “You don’t talk much. They’ll ask you to talk. I mean, I know you don’t mind talking, the way you look when you—but I noticed you let other people answer first, in your interviews, y’know?”  
  
Multiple responses collide in Sebastian’s head— _you watch MY interviews??_ being the loudest, along with a tiny bit of being insulted that Chris thinks he’s too delicate for press conferences—but he opts for, “I like being asked questions?” and hopes the words don’t come out too defensive or, worse, flirtatious, as if he’s hoping Chris will ask him something.  
  
Chris could ask him anything. He’d say yes. Those big hands, that kindly authoritative voice, that _beard._  
  
“Yeah,” Chris sighs, “I know, I know, I just—look, if you want me to stay with you, to take some of them, I will, okay?”  
  
“You’d do that…”  
  
“I will,” Chris says firmly. “Right there, arm around you, you just look at me if you want to answer one, and you can, how’s that sound?”  
  
Because his higher brain functions’ve temporarily shut off, Sebastian says, “Like you’d be giving me permission to talk,” and then promptly internally panics in every possible way, including the way in which his cock thinks that’s a _fantastic_ idea.  
  
Chris stops, blinks, swallows, laughs. Nervously. “Um…I guess it would look like that, wouldn’t it…all right, never mind, I can—”  
  
“But,” Sebastian says, “yes, _da_ , yes please,” and Chris says, “Wait, what?” and they stare at each other for an eternal ten seconds before Sebastian lunges forward and presses his lips to Chris’s beneath the avid stares of spare theater furniture.  
  
Chris kisses back. Sebastian _knows_ Chris kisses back. Chris groans into the kiss and pushes up into him, hand burying itself in Sebastian’s hair, beard roughly scraping skin, tongue slipping out to lick along Sebastian’s bottom lip, teeth nipping at sensitive flesh; Sebastian moans and opens up readily for him, beckoning, wanting—  
  
Chris jerks away, trips over his own legs and lands hard on the carpet, and pants, “Fuck—”  
  
Sebastian’s just trying to get breath back. He can’t talk. His entire body’s lit up and unsatisfied and he wants to either have an orgasm or cry.  
  
“Fuck,” Chris says again, stumbling to clumsy feet. “I—Sebastian, I—you can’t, you can’t want—you don’t know what I—”  
  
“What?”  
  
Chris scrubs both hands over his face. His answer’s despairing. “You don’t know what I’d do to you—with you—I can’t—you’re the fuckin’ nicest kid I know, all—sweet and wide-eyed and, Christ, you’d say yes, and have you ever even—”  
  
“Are you trying to say you think I’m a _virgin?”_ His voice actually squeaks on the last word. Not helping, voice. “ _Pula mea_ —English, _rahat_ , shit, sorry—what the fuck—I’m very much not!”  
  
“That’s not reassuring!” Chris hisses back, presumably not shouting in deference to their storage-room location. “You—I don’t know what you know, who you’ve—I don’t know how good they’ve been to you, and I—you never talk about how you grew up and I did get on Wikipedia once and look up what was going on then, I’m sorry, you can hate me if you want, I just had to know, I didn’t want to say something stupid and—and it was all about food shortages and fucking child labor and secret police and the black market—I’m sorry, okay, I just never want you to feel like you can’t say no!”  
  
Sebastian sits there on his chair, mouth shaping the beginnings of words— _what, you, I was eight, we got out, I’m fine minus the occasional shadowy nightmare, I very much like sex thank you_ —that never quite fall out.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Chris says again. “I can’t—the things I want, when I look at you, it’s not fuckin’ right, it’s not fair to you. And you’re so damn beautiful, the way you smile, I can’t—I’m going, I’m gonna leave, I’ll leave you alone, just—just tell me you’re okay, one more time, and I’ll go.”  
  
“Wait.” He feels rather like he’s had his mother’s piano dropped on his head—musical crashing crescendos, lovely and painful—and he’s grabbing at words like broken notes before they hit the ground. “Please. Chris. You said—you want me.”  
  
Chris laughs, brittle and harsh and unamused. “That’s the problem, isn’t it. You and me.”  
  
“You think I’m sweet,” Sebastian says. “You think I’m naïve. That I don’t know how to say no and mean it. But you also think I grew up knowing how to be scared. How to survive. You can’t have both. And if you think both of those things, you don’t know me.” He doesn’t quite mean to say that last part. Surprises both of them, from the way Chris’s lips part. An invisible blow.  
  
“I mean—” He stops. Shuts his eyes. “You do know me. You know when I’m not okay. When I’m off-balance. You know I drink black coffee in the mornings and can eat tiramisu for breakfast. I know that was you, leaving the bakery box in my trailer.”  
  
“You…said once that you like it?”  
  
“I do.” Open eyes again. Finding Chris’s face. Willing him to understand. “You could’ve asked. I’d’ve told you. We were scared sometimes. Yes. And there wasn’t enough food. But I was a kid, and when you’re a kid…” He waves a hand. Chris, amazingly, seems to get it, judging by the tiny nod.  
  
“We were never really poor. Mama’s a pianist. Good. Better than I am.” Chris starts to speak; Sebastian pauses, but Chris shakes his head, so he goes on. “The arts, artists…there is a certain respect. Not political immunity, but we had a better apartment, more rations, than some….and we got out. I never learned all the details, so don’t ask. If you were going to, just then. But she knew people, Mama. And we were okay. We are okay. So, yes, thank you. For caring, not for the part where you were taking the internet as universally accurate. Just don’t…”  
  
He stops again. Runs a hand through his hair, suddenly exhausted. He doesn’t talk about this. He hadn’t _expected_ to talk about this. “Don’t look at me like I’m breakable.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Chris whispers again. Hand over his mouth. Accent stronger than usual: shaken foundations under the warmth. “I didn’t mean—it doesn’t matter what I meant. I’m sorry.”  
  
“I want you,” Sebastian says. His head hurts, right between his eyes, over the bridge of his nose. He rubs the spot with two fingers. Chris makes a small sound; when Sebastian looks up, Chris has a hand halfway held out, a hopeless aborted gesture.  
  
“You know I want you.” Chris’s voice shakes, not with anger. With something like—awe? No. That can’t be right. “I just—I think I’ve completely fucked this up, haven’t I? You kissed me. First, I mean.”  
  
“Yes. I mean I did.” He sighs. The chair’s no longer as comfortable as it initially had been. No doubt getting exasperated with them. “I wanted to. Can we—”  
  
His mobile phone goes off, singing Sinatra into the air. A second later, Chris’s goes off too, some sort of classic rock tune.  
  
Sebastian lunges for his. Chris does the same. And then swears, impressively blasphemous. “Fuck, fuck, the premiere—”  
  
“Oh, _mama dracului_ —oh, fuck, headache, ow—well, standing up was a terrible idea—”  
  
“Come here!” Chris wraps an arm around him. Pulls him in close. “I’ve got you, okay? Just lean on me for a minute?”  
  
Sebastian nods. Puts his aching head on Chris’s shoulder, face tucked into muscular sturdy heat. Chris feels wonderful. Solid. Solace.  
  
Chris’s hand slides up a little shyly to rub at the back of his neck. The hand’s large and reassuring; Sebastian relaxes into the caress. And some of the confusion, some of the tension, begins to bleed away.  
  
“You like this?” Chris murmurs the question to the top of his head. “Being touched?”  
  
“Yes, please.”  
  
“So polite. I’m not wrong about you being sweet, y’know.”  
  
But that’s teasing, looped through gentle concern; Sebastian offers, to Chris’s chest, “If we are exchanging compliments, I like your beard,” and Chris laughs, a rumble of relieved amusement that Sebastian can feel everyplace they’re touching. “You have a thing for beards?”  
  
“I have a…thing…for you. And for the way you look.” He blushes, but adds, “older,” anyway.  
  
“Hmm,” Chris says, not stopping the massage. “Good to know. Later.”  
  
“Later…”  
  
“Premiere,” Chris nudges, and Sebastian reluctantly disentangles himself from the wonderful hand and stands up on his own. The headache’s better, if not gone. He even feels vague affection for the hideous chairs.  
  
They head out for their premiere. Chris grins at him outside the theater doors. When Sebastian smiles back, Chris drapes an arm over his shoulders. And the weight sends swooping butterflies through his body. This might happen. This might happen, after all.  
  
  
Of course it’s not that easy. Most things aren’t. Why should this be any different, Sebastian concludes, and downs the end of his drink. It’s a classic Manhattan, very nineteen-fifties and apparently back in vogue, of which he approves. The afterparty’s loud and colorful and drunken and swirling, under glittering lights; he watches distractedly for a second, and then Chris’s hand touches his wrist.  
  
“Want another round?”  
  
“Oh…” That’ll be three. It’s an open bar, on Marvel’s dime, but… “I don’t know. Perhaps.”  
  
“You’re being quiet.”  
  
“I’m thinking,” Sebastian says, and then has to repeat it because the music’s too loud. At least the afterparty’s here at their hotel; it’ll be easy for everyone to get back to rooms safely afterward. Chris’s fingers tap over his wrist, concerned, protective. “About what?”  
  
“Never mind. Yes, please. One more.” He hands over the glass. Chris sighs, in a tone that says _we’re not done here,_ and goes.  
  
Sebastian smiles as Anthony Mackie waves from the dance floor, but doesn’t move from his spot. Only props a shoulder against the wall so they can hold each other up, and finds himself watching Chris’s progress through the throng.  
  
Things have changed, and haven’t. Chris has spent the entire premiere and the so far hour of elapsed party time touching him, smiling at him. Right by his side, as promised. Sebastian loves that feeling; it’s shy and excited, down in the pit of his stomach. Champagne-fizzy as the spinning lights above.  
  
But Chris as yet hasn’t _done_ anything. Chris, in fact, has been a consummate gentleman. Fetching him drinks, checking to make sure he’s okay among crowds, asking how his head’s feeling. Being considerate, being solicitous.  
  
And so: Sebastian still wants to scream.  
  
Chris looks at him now not as if he’s precious and fragile but as if he’s _amazing_. As if he’s something to be treasured, adored, revered.  
  
The trouble with reverence, Sebastian thinks, watching those broad shoulders reach the bar and earnestly engage the bartender on his behalf, is that it’s awfully lonely on the receiving end.  
  
He’s not artwork. He’s not pure and clean as marble.  
  
He’s human and he wants to belong to Chris and he wants to be shoved up against the wall he’s currently keeping company and made to _know_ it. He wants to be held down and fucked until he screams. He wants the rasp of Chris’s beard across his stomach and thighs, Chris’s body atop his, Chris’s hot breath along his ear. He wants to feel it all in the morning.  
  
And he hates himself a little for it. He’s _got_ Chris now, in some astonishing inexplicable fumbling way. Chris smiles at him and holds his hand in the theater dark and has gone to get him another drink just because Sebastian asked him for one. Wanting more isn’t fair. It isn’t, as Chris’d said, right.  
  
Chris is beautiful, he thinks idly, watching those shoulders return, under the lights. A superhero. Constructed like one from the inside out: not without bruises and flaws, but truly deeply kind. Someone who _feels_ so strongly, hurting or laughing or smiling along with the world.  
  
Sebastian ends up smiling too. He’s happy. They’ll make it work.  
  
Chris makes it back to his side. Hands over the drink. Sebastian takes a sip. Then blinks, eyebrows going up. “Bourbon whiskey? Not rye?”  
  
“You like sweet.” Chris reaches out, brushes hair out of his face even though it’s nowhere near his eyes. “I know it’s not as authentic. I thought…I don’t know. I could make you smile, maybe.”  
  
“You do,” Sebastian says, and takes another sip. It’s true. And flavors of gold honey and smoky liquor and maraschino cherries burst across his taste buds. “You do.”  
  
“Do I?” Chris leans in, sudden and swift. Drops a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “You taste like dessert.”  
  
Sebastian, startled, says, “I can be your dessert, if you’d like,” and Chris blushes, but grins. “Maybe, yeah. Sebastian?”  
  
“Hmm? This is marvelous, by the way. Thank you.”  
  
“No, come on, I just thought you’d like it. I just…what you said. About liking the beard. About me looking older. You said you like that.” Blushing even more now, behind the facial hair. Tripping over words, shoulders more awkward.  
  
And Sebastian thinks, oh.  
  
It’s less of a conscious realization. More of an abrupt comprehension, as if he’s always known, and he _has:_ Chris does get anxious, does worry about the future and about letting people down. And this is new for them both.  
  
He takes another sip of _his_ drink. Slides his hand over to Chris’s waist. Observes, serene in the knowledge that this too is the inarguable truth, “I’ve wanted you all along, you understand. I like the beard. I’ve always liked…older men. But it was always you. Regardless of your facial hair.”  
  
And then he waits. Chris stands there, mouth open, for a moment. The multihued lights play symphonies across his hair. Across wide blue eyes, darker and more complex than Sebastian’s own.  
  
“I don’t know what to say,” Chris finally admits, voice a little hoarse.  
  
“Well,” Sebastian offers, “I can talk for both of us, and you can look at me when you want to answer…”  
  
Chris, surprised into laughter, grabs his shoulder to hold on. Sebastian hides his satisfied smile in one more gulp of fruit-and-whiskey decadence. Excellent, then. Like the two of them together.  
  
“You,” Chris says, getting breath back. “You’re fuckin’ perfect. Um. About that. The way you look at me, with the beard. I, um. Kind of like that. The way you look at me.”  
  
“Really,” Sebastian murmurs, and leans a shoulder into Chris instead of the wall. Chris is warm and strong and all-encompassing. “We can do something with that.”  
  
Chris blushes again. Sebastian grins at his drink. It shimmers up at him in shared anticipation. And he and the honeyed whiskey silently make plans.

 

These plans ultimately involve a miniscule amount of deception and the enlisting of Anthony, who, when informed that Sebastian’s attempting to surprise Chris, gets the glint of pure devilishness in his eyes and promises to keep Captain America waylaid on the return from the men’s room for as long as necessary. Sebastian briefly wonders whether this is too cruel to Chris, but decides it’s not. Just barely.  
  
Anyway, he needs time to escape up the stairs. To work on the next part of the plan.  
  
He dives into his room. Flings every item of clothing out of his suitcase. Ah. Those jeans. And _that_ shirt. And some…extra touches.  
  
His phone rings. He grins. Ignores it.  
  
They’re his skinniest black jeans. The ones that look like they’ve been painted on. And the only white t-shirt he’s brought, not transparent like the seductive green option but soft and billowing and simple. And then he grabs lip gloss—clear, thanks, he’s not going for blatant and anyway his lips don’t need it—and considers the effect.  
  
His reflection gazes back from the mirror. Every bit as long-legged and innocent and wide-eyed as Chris has ever believed him to be. Baby kittens and wobbly colts and shy fawns in a forest.  
  
He ends up grinning at the mirror this time.  
  
His phone goes off a second time, too. Chris, of course. Even the Sinatra tune sounds more annoyed.  
  
Almost, almost. He sprints across his room—not barefoot; he’d had to find his last pair of low-cut white socks for this, but it’ll work, bashful sock-feet peeking out from under jeans—and pounces on the connecting door. Chris’s room’s on the other side; it’s locked, because Sebastian’s only just gotten here this morning and they’ve not had time to rectify that detail, but from now on it won’t be.  
  
His phone yells at him the third time while he’s halfway through picking the lock, and nearly makes him drop the safety-pin. He hangs onto it, scowls at the screen reproachfully, and twists his wrist.  
  
The lock clicks. _“_ _Mulțumesc,”_ he mutters to it, “thank you,” and tosses the safety-pin into his pocket, neatly closed. Might be a good idea to tell Chris about this particular skill. Sometime. Probably with the caveat that it’d been for a role, research, not any kind of childhood necessity. It’s still fun.  
  
Chris’s room is a compromise between innate untidiness and guilt about said untidiness and the needs of a man getting ready for a formal event in a hurry. Sebastian smiles, inadvertent and fond. Breathes in the traces of wood-sharp cologne in the air, the cool edge of the night. Chris turns down the heat in hotel rooms; he’s known that from other nights, shared drinks, running lines, decompressing with terrible television movies. Chris likes to be reminded by the chill that he’s awake and alert and alive.  
  
Sebastian loves knowing these things. Loves the fact that he gets to know them. Little pieces of Chris, of who Chris is.  
  
He sprawls artistically across Chris’s half-made bed, grabs his phone, and texts. And then starts counting, in his head.  
  
He’s at three minutes and forty-two seconds when the door crashes open, full of volcanic Chris Evans. “‘ _I’m in your room’?!”_  
  
Sebastian props himself up on one elbow. “Well, I am.”  
  
“What the hell!” Furious, glorious, rumpled from what must’ve been a sprint up eleven flights of stairs, with incandescent eyes and dangerous muscles. Sebastian lets the smile curl around the corners of his mouth, appreciating.  
  
“You fuckin’ disappeared!” Chris is shouting. Waving the phone. “You could’ve died—you had a headache, what if that was—you could’ve been kidnapped, or hurt, or—”  
  
Sebastian slides off the bed, one fluid motion. Comes across the room to stop in front of all the spectacular indignation. “Sorry, sir.”  
  
“Do you have any idea how fucking scared I was!” Chris runs a hand through his hair. “I thought you…were gone…I…what are you wearing?”  
  
“I wanted to be comfortable.” Sebastian tilts his head to one side. Puts on his best guileless kitten-in-sunbeams expression. “Do you mind, sir?”  
  
Chris’s eyes appear to be magnetized to the line of his hips. The places where black denim barely clings to golden skin. He’s not wearing underwear of any sort. Chris can almost certainly tell.  
  
Chris’s gaze slips downward, along the lines of his legs; down to his toes, purposefully unguarded winsome sock-feet on Chris’s hotel-room carpet, no shoes in sight. And then back up, hot blue intensity raking over every inch of him.  
  
The air shifts. Changes. Crackles.  
  
“You,” Chris rumbles, quiet and deliberate, “did this on purpose. Didn’t you, kid.”  
  
Sebastian hears himself inhale. That word, in that voice. He can’t find a good answer.  
  
Chris’s eyes narrow. One hand flings the phone at the closest chair. And then there’s a flurry of fight-training motion.  
  
The motion ends with Sebastian pinned against the closest wall, head thumping somewhat painfully into plaster, surrounded by towering muscles and the scent of Chris’s cologne. His knees threaten to give out.  
  
Chris grabs both his wrists. Slams them into the wall beside his head. This time he can’t not moan.  
  
Chris pushes down harder, at that. Leans in closer, so all that weight’s pressed up against him, and growls into his ear, “You like this? Was this what you wanted, me holding you down, making you mine, fuckin’ punishing you for that?”  
  
The words fall hot and intense along his skin; Chris’s breath ghosts over his skin, and the beard scrapes pleasurable prickles along his jaw, his cheek. He can’t even think. Only tips his head, baring his throat for easier access, anything, everything.  
  
Chris sighs, broad hands keeping his wrists anchored firmly in place. Hips nudge into his: Chris is hard, huge and rigid, a line of desire Sebastian can feel alongside his own. He wants it inside him, wants that cock in his mouth, in his body, however Chris wants to take him.  
  
Chris kisses the line of his neck, but lightly, unexpectedly so. Butterfly-wings over sensitive skin. Sebastian whimpers. “Shh,” Chris murmurs, tugging his wrists higher, over his head. “I want to. I want this. And you know you deserve it. Being punished.”  
  
“Yes—yes, please, sir, I— _oh_ —”  
  
Chris stops nipping gently over the pulse-point in his throat to admonish, “Did I say you could talk?” Sebastian’s hips arch forward. Completely involuntary, that. He almost says the no, but remembers in time and shakes his head, mute.  
  
“Good.” Chris shifts hand position. Rubs thumbs soothingly over Sebastian’s palms, grounding, settling. For both of them, perhaps; Sebastian closes his eyes, falling into the touch.  
  
“Okay,” Chris says, tone somewhere between excitement and trepidation and lingering frightened anger, “if we’re gonna do this, we need to talk about it, okay? I know why you did it, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. You can talk now.”  
  
Sebastian swallows. Hard. “You…I only wanted you to…I want this. I want you to believe that. But I scared you. I’m sorry, sir.” He has to look down, after that. The words open up canyons of unhappiness deep inside. He’s hurt Chris and he’s not been good for Chris and that’s _wrong._  
  
“Hey.” Chris leans forward—there’s a change in weight distribution where their bodies’re aligned—and a nose bumps his. “Look at me. Please. Also, is this gonna be a thing? The sir? I don’t mind, but you know I’m not asking for that.”  
  
He still can’t look. He hadn’t even noticed, the last time. It’d just come out. Had felt right. But Chris not minding isn’t the same as Chris liking it, and if that’s wrong too…  
  
Chris breathes out, an exasperated huff of air. “Okay. Look at me. Now.”  
  
That’s an order, full stop, delivered in that tone. Sebastian lifts his eyes. And discovers, amazed, that Chris’s gaze isn’t angry. If anything, concerned. And the thumbs are stroking encouragingly over his palms again where his hands’re flat against the wall.  
  
He curls fingers down over Chris’s, tentatively. Chris smiles. “Okay. I can give you orders if it helps. I’ve never done this before, so you’re gonna have to put up with a learning curve, all right?”  
  
Sebastian licks his lips. Whispers back, “I can live with that,” and Chris kisses him, fleeting and sweet as wild honey. “I’m thinking I can, too. But, listen, what I said before. About you saying no. I want you to know I mean that, okay? You can always say no. I want you. I don’t want to hurt you. Clear?”  
  
“Clear.” Sebastian finds himself smiling back, in the wake of that kiss. Blue skies and cloudless horizons, echoed in Chris’s eyes. In the bite of broad hands around his wrists. “I trust you. I mean I trust you to stop if I say stop. I will say it. If I need to. And I am apologizing for worrying you. I know how I’d feel if it were you. I’m sorry.”  
  
He can see the grateful appreciation in all the ocean depths, those blue waves understanding the sincerity of the apology; the thank you goes unspoken but hovers tangible in the night, in the vertical plane of the wall behind his back, in the heat of Chris’s hips rocking into his. Aloud, Chris does say, “And I’m sorry you felt like you had to do something drastic to get me to stop being a moron. I love these jeans, I love this outfit, have I told you that? I mean, fuck, look at you.”  
  
Sebastian grins. They’re okay. They’re _more_ than okay. “I thought you might. Your sweet kid, you said. I like you saying that. The way you look at me when you say it.”  
  
“Yeah?” That blue gaze darkens. Smoky intent. “Yeah, okay. One thing, though.” Large hands pull Sebastian’s wrists higher, stretched above his head; Chris transfers both captive arms to one unyielding grip, and rests a thumb over Sebastian’s bottom lip, pressing down. Sebastian’s whole body turns to molten gold, flowing and pliant.  
  
“This,” Chris muses, dragging the thumb slowly across his mouth. “Lip gloss. Not exactly innocent of you, kid. Makin’ everyone look at your mouth. And you know what they all want to do to your mouth, don’t you? Or maybe not, maybe you don’t, maybe you only think you know, wanting to be taken apart and ruined, when you don’t even know what that means, what I want to do to you…”  
  
“Please,” Sebastian gets out, around the blunt invasion, Chris’s thumb teasing his lips further apart. “Yes, everything, please…”  
  
“No lip gloss,” Chris says. “Unless you feel like being naughty. Like you need to be punished. Clear?” And two fingers slip into his mouth, filling him up so that he can only nod. Even as he moans, though, sound tangled around the intrusion, their eyes catch. And it _is_ clear: that one’s an easy rule, one that he can break if he needs to. They both know he will.  
  
He licks at Chris’s fingers in assent. Sucking, stroking, lavishing sensual attention on them the way he would on Chris’s cock. Chris growls, primal and aroused. Pulls the fingers out, pulls Sebastian away from the wall, spins him to face the bed, yanks hands behind his back, squeezes. “Mine.”  
  
“Yes—”  
  
“You can call me sir.” Chris, from behind, trails lips over his neck and collarbone. Every atom of Sebastian’s body dances. “I like it. Coming from you.”  
  
Sebastian twists just far enough to look back over his shoulder. “You like your sweet shy boy calling you sir? While on my knees for you, perhaps?”  
  
“My sweet shy boy,” Chris retorts, a hint of laughter in that tone, “is about to get himself spanked for being a brat, you are aware.”  
  
“Oh?” In fact he’s very nearly fallen over at that statement, but if that’s the promise, then he’s entirely willing to push further. “Is that what you do when someone needs to be…punished, sir?”  
  
“Only you.” Chris forcefully walks him over to the bed, hand keeping his wrists secure at the small of his back. Then pauses, circling around to stand in front of him. “Um…you know that, right? Only you.”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian agrees, laughing a little in turn. Not really amusement. Simple joy. He knows. Chris is loyal to the core. Tattooed on his bones. “I know. And yes. Only you, for me.” Always.  
  
“I know.” Chris touches an index finger to his lips; Sebastian kisses it. “I know. Want me to spank you now?”  
  
Sebastian raises an eyebrow at him. Chris grins. “Just checking. I’m going to spank you now. Not because I’m trying to hurt you. Because you know you deserve it. Because you want me to. Say it.”  
  
Sebastian opens his mouth. Pauses, words just out of reach. That’s new. New and shocking, intimate and freeing. He wants to say it. He wants to drop to his knees and beg Chris to spank him. The shudder runs all through him, private and shameful and pleasurable.  
  
He’s been spanked before, been fucked before. He knows what he likes. He likes older men with powerful hands, with an air of unquestionable command as they bend him over a bed or a desk. He knows the sublime weightlessness of submission.  
  
But this…  
  
This is new. Different. This is Chris. Blue eyes and kind hands like the one sneaking up to cup his cheek, tender and anxious even mid-scene. Strength and affection in equal measure, nothing hidden, nothing kept back. Chris will never be anything less than open and honest, heart laid bare and unashamed before the world.  
  
Sebastian wants to give him everything. Wants to be everything Chris needs.  
  
He wants to be good for Chris and to make Chris smile and to pour his heart and soul into those broad hands for safekeeping because he knows that Chris will hold all the pieces with care, because he has only himself to give but he’ll give it all if Chris will take it, because he loves Chris with everything he is.  
  
He loves Chris.  
  
He’s in love with Chris.  
  
Not just with the extremely attractive beard or the unabashed laughter or the electric crackle of authority when Chris gives him an order. All those’re bonuses, and definitely good. But he’s in love with _Chris._  
  
He feels breathless. As if he’s been kicked in the gut by rainbows. Wobbly on his feet.  
  
“Sebastian?” Chris taps his cheek with a curious fingertip. “Too much? Me asking you to say it? You don’t have to.”  
  
“…what…no…sorry, no, I’m fine. You’re fine. I want to.” He manages a breath. He does want to say it. More than he ever has before. “I want you to spank me. Because I need it, sir.”  
  
Chris’s eyes go wide, arousal flooding all the seas. “Fuck. Say it again.”  
  
“Please,” Sebastian whispers. “I need you to spank me, sir.”  
  
Chris lets out a noise that can only be described as a hungry growl. “Shirt off. Jeans…off? Or…no. Around your ankles. And come here. Over my lap.”  
  
It crosses his mind, dimly, to wonder whether Chris has done this before. It’s a vague thought, tinged with jealousy, but not badly so: Chris promised this was for only them, here and now. He believes that; and so, as he pulls his shirt off over his head, as Chris sits down on the bed, he takes a breath, lets it out. Lets himself fall.  
  
The comforter’s tossed back, and the sheets are cool and crisp to his skin. The cotton wrinkles exuberantly around his fingers, his elbows, as he stretches over Chris’s thighs. Chris is still dressed, the disheveled remains of his suit from the premiere; silky expensive fabric caresses Sebastian’s bare legs, and the contrast makes him shiver deliciously. He’s vulnerable, exposed, jeans around his ankles while fingertips explore the arrow of his spine; and his cock’s heavy and aching at the junction of his thighs, full and tight. He can hear his own pulse-beat in his ears.  
  
“God, you’re beautiful,” Chris says, fingers trailing over his back, his hip. That faded Boston accent’s hushed as if afraid to break a magic spell: silversmiths and midnight rides and history, Irish pubs and deep-down roots, all quieted at the touch of a hand to Sebastian’s skin. “Okay. Only ten, all right? For now?”  
  
Sebastian, sprawled over Chris’s lap, cock throbbing with need, nevertheless manages to crane around and raise the eyebrow at him again.  
  
Chris blushes. “Sorry, fuck, I did say learning curve. Ten. Because I say so. I want you to count. We’ll start when you say yes. Stop me if you need to. Ready?”  
  
“One question. Not a terribly serious one.”  
  
Chris now looks startled. Not as if he’s upset about the fact of the question. More a physical recognition that, yes, Sebastian can and will ask. “Anything. Always.”  
  
“Where do you want my hands?” He waves one in demonstration. “Behind my back, or on the bed, or at the back of my neck…”  
  
“Oh—that’s a thing? I mean…okay. Not behind your back. Maybe the last one? If that’s comfortable.”  
  
“The point, sir,” Sebastian sighs, “is not precisely comfort, do I have to instruct you about proper authoritative technique,” and hears and feels Chris laugh, leg shaking beneath him. “Brat. Twelve, then.”  
  
“You like it. Sir. Unless…”  
  
“Unless what?”  
  
“Unless you’d rather I call you Daddy while you spank me.”  
  
There’s a moment of profoundly shocked silence, just enough that Sebastian starts to wonder whether that’s gone too far, and then Chris’s hand lands hard on his backside, a spank that turns into a squeeze, fingertips biting down into soft flesh. Chris’s thighs’re taut under his body, and when he squirms he can feel Chris’s arousal against his hip, stiff as a poker through the lines of his suit.  
  
“Christ,” Chris gets out, hand tightening even more, enough that Sebastian lets out an openmouthed whimper of pain and ecstasy as fingernails dig into his skin. “You—some fuckin’ warning, please, before you say that. Not now, okay? Later. Definitely later. Just—give me time to get used to this part first. Not a no.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” Sebastian agrees demurely, and buries his grin in the accommodating sheets. Chris likes the idea. They both like the idea. And learning, together, is going to be _fun_.  
  
He’s perfectly aware that Freudians would no doubt have theories and explanations for that particular desire. Father long out of the picture in another country, stepfather also his private-school headmaster, and so on. Might all even be true. But he’s not going to worry about it. Not if Chris is on board, and they’re both going to enjoy it. And they are.  
  
“…right,” Chris says, still sounding a bit dazed. “So. You never said the, y’know, yes. Also that one doesn’t count, because—because that was for making me want to skip this part and just fuck you until you scream. So, twelve. When you say yes.”  
  
“I like your plan. _Da._ Yes.”  
  
“Yes,” Chris says, and Sebastian waits, fingers laced at the back of his head, cock throbbing where it’s trapped between his stomach and Chris’s thigh.  
  
Chris’s hand cracks down. The impact blossoms, pink and billowing. He breathes, “One,” and feels it from head to toes.  
  
Again. The other side. Matching. Sebastian counts; Chris does it again, and again, handprints hot across stinging skin. Chris isn’t hitting him as hard as possible—Sebastian knows as much, courtesy of fight scenes and blocked swings—but isn’t holding back. Not making it easy.  
  
By six he’s whimpering ceaselessly, barely able to get the number out, hips lifting of their own volition, pleading for more. His backside burns, individual impacts long blurred into wonderful heat. Chris pauses to run a hand over the marks, proprietary and affectionate. Sebastian sobs, face hidden, hands obediently in place, and rubs himself against the solid line of Chris’s thigh, cock leaking and desperate for friction.  
  
“Shh,” Chris murmurs, and pets his hair, strokes his back. “You’re doing so well. So good for me, kid.”  
  
He cries a little more. He can’t help it. Walls collapsing. He’s needed this, needed Chris to do this, for so long.  
  
“You’re okay,” Chris promises, artist’s fingers etching a heart over his hip. “Six more, you can take that, you can do that, for me.”  
  
He nods. Chris pats the invisible heart-sketch, and lifts the hand, and swings. Harder, not much, but a noticeable amount. Sebastian counts. Chris pauses again at eight, and kindly rearranges his hips, spreads his legs further apart, exposing his hole to the chilly night air, to the hot blue gaze. Sebastian whines low in his throat, not a protest—he can’t think enough to protest—but a trembling release, acceptance of himself on display. Whatever Chris wants of him. Please.  
  
“So beautiful,” Chris says again, along with other murmured heartfelt words of praise. “Letting me do this, letting me see you, all of you…I can’t even fuckin’ believe it, you know? You…I wanted to do this the first time I met you. Those screen tests, in that stupid tiny room with the broken air-conditioner, and all I could think about was bending you over one of those leather chairs and licking the drops of sweat off your skin while I fucked you from behind….”  
  
Sebastian might’ve moaned. That noise certainly wasn’t a word. Might not’ve even been audible. He’s getting lost in the sensations, in the slow deep roll of Chris’s voice.  
  
“You looked like you were about fifteen and you smiled at me when I said hi to you, like no one else had ever said hi to you before, like me looking at you was the best thing that ever happened to you, and I didn’t even make it home after our screen test, you know that? Walked right into the closest men’s room and jerked off thinking about that smile.”  
  
The hand snaps down again. Centered. Directly over tender quivering muscle. Sebastian screams, muffled by the sheets. Chris stops. Leans down. Sebastian opens one eye, lashes wet and sticking together. Nods: we’re okay, you’re okay, go on. Chris nods back. Kisses his own index finger, brushes it over Sebastian’s lips as they shape the “nine.”  
  
“If you’re going to scream, kid,” Chris contemplates, “I’m going to gag you. Of course, then you couldn’t count. I’ll have to think about it.”  
  
Sebastian sighs, softly. Pushes his hips forward, enjoying the drag of his swollen cock along Chris’s muscular thigh. The need there hasn’t diminished, but it’s grown more diffuse, not centered between his legs but omnipresent, floating and radiant. He’s drifting in it, not unmoored but anchored by Chris’s presence.  
  
Ten and eleven land on either side again, Chris being careful. Sebastian lifts his hips readily for both. Chris rubs at sizzling skin, after, easing the immediate sting but in reality kneading it deeper. Those will hurt in a few hours. They hurt now, but in a good way. Cleansing. Annealing.  
  
“I felt so fuckin’ dirty,” Chris admits, hand continuing to rub the last mark, on the left. “I knew you weren’t fifteen or anything, but I didn’t know how old you were, for all I knew you were barely fuckin’ legal, those eyes and those legs and that mouth, all earnest and sweet, and there’s me getting off in a men’s room imagining that mouth wrapped around my cock…I’d never wanted anyone like that. Like I couldn’t stop picturing you.”  
  
Sebastian moans, wordless. Chris understands regardless. Chris is good at that. “You come when I say, kid. Only when I say. When I let you.”  
  
The wave of pleasure’s shocking, and immediate. Denial and frustration transmuted to effervescent surrender. Yes, please. That’s right. He’s Chris’s, now, and that’s right.  
  
“Good,” Chris praises, and the hand comes down one more time, right where his legs are spread wide, impact centered over that pink tiny hole. The world goes white and airless, teetering on the brink; but he doesn’t come, though his cock jumps and pulses between them, small frantic spurts over his stomach, over Chris’s suit.  
  
He’s shaky in the aftermath, limp and malleable in Chris’s hands; Chris says, also sounding shaky, “Move your hands, let me see your eyes, are you all right, please—” and Sebastian moves, turns, acutely aware of every languid action. He breathes, “I’m all right, _sunt bine_ —fine, sir,” and it’s more true than it’s ever been in his life. Even if Chris doesn’t say the word love, not yet, that’s fine too, it’s too soon anyway and this is enough, more than enough, this suffusion of golden radiance.  
  
“You are.” Chris touches his cheek, traces the remains of fallen tears. “Okay. I want you on your knees. Now.”  
  
He slides to the floor between Chris’s spread legs. His legs aren’t working too well, but the carpet’s sympathetic, beige and compassionate to scorched skin. Chris is still dressed, though that suit’ll be a lost cause; Sebastian flushes, seeing the wet spots along one leg, knowing they’re from his heedless desperate rutting. He’s naked now, naked except for the searing handprints across his backside. And Chris wants him.  
  
He looks up. Chris is looking at him, gaze fond and wondering. Sebastian tries to glance away—too much, too open, too brilliantly painful—and one broad hand catches his chin, forces him to look up.  
  
“Look at me,” Chris says, very softly. “I like seeing you.”  
  
He nods. Chris’s thumb brushes the corner of his mouth. He inexplicably wants to cry again, though he doesn’t. Mostly.  
  
“I want your mouth,” Chris says. “On me.” The other hand’s busy drawing out his cock, long and thick and gorgeously proportioned. Sebastian wants his mouth on that length, too.  
  
Chris is gentle at first despite the orders, guiding himself deeper bit by bit, stopping and pulling back when Sebastian tries to coax him into more. He coils fingers into Sebastian’s hair, holding his head in place—not hard but firm—and waits; Sebastian gets the message and settles, waiting too. Chris nods in approval. And then claims his mouth. Incontrovertibly.  
  
Chris’s cock is thick as well as long; every good thrust hits the back of his throat, fills his mouth, leaves his eyes watering. He’s good at this, he knows he is, but he’s losing all his practiced techniques in the sheer sensual onslaught. He tries to keep up, tongue and teeth and lips, friction and suction; he figures out the best spots for tiny kitten-licks and rhythmic strokes along the underside, the places and pressures that earn groans and drops of bittersweetness across his tongue, but Chris seems to enjoy making him lose coherence and control, seems to like him messy and off-balance and simply open for the taking. And Sebastian lets himself open up and be taken, head cradled in large hands while Chris’s cock fucks his mouth, his throat; while he moans around the length of it filling him up, and his eyes flutter shut.  
  
Chris swears abruptly, all those splendid muscles tensing. Pulls back, breathing hard, the wet tip of his cock resting over Sebastian’s sticky lips. “Fuck—you’re too good, you feel too good, I’m going to—too _close_ —”  
  
Sebastian looks up through half-lowered eyelashes and murmurs, voice battered and languorous, hardly recognizable as his, “You can come on me, sir, all yours, your sweet kid, on my knees for you, Daddy,” and Chris groans and shudders and _does,_ without moving, white-hot stripes of release splashing his face, his nose, his closed eyes.  
  
Sebastian’s trembling too, not aware of anything except the bliss of the moment; Chris’s hands land on his shoulders, steadying them both as Chris slumps forward, leaning down from the edge of the bed to press a kiss into Sebastian’s hair. “You…you…that…fuck…”  
  
No words, only quivering immanance; Chris breathes in and out and all at once Sebastian finds himself tossed onto the bed, with no clear recollection of being scooped off the floor. “Right,” Chris pants, yanking clothes off in countless directions, revealing planes of well-honed muscle and inky tattoos, “your turn,” and then starts kissing him everywhere, the soft skin along a forearm, the arch of his left hip, the thin-skinned line of his collarbone. Lips and teeth nibble marks into hypersensitive flesh; Sebastian gasps and sobs and swears in broken English and German and Romanian, and Chris laughs and kisses his stomach, rubbing the bristles of that beard across tingling skin. Sebastian’s hips lift off the bed. Chris smirks. And holds him down. Both hands.  
  
Kisses along his legs, the inside of a knee—that one makes him squirm, not exactly aware enough to be ticklish but close—and his inner thighs, so near to all the places that ache for it the most; he whimpers and tries to move, and Chris’s hands pin him down, careful but relentless. That beard scratches over exposed delicate skin, leaving prickled pinkness behind; Sebastian goes limp in the restraining hands, crying unashamedly now with unfulfilled need.  
  
Chris stops. Kisses the very tip of his straining cock, light and almost chaste. Looks up. “Still okay? You can tell me if it’s too much. If you need me to stop.”  
  
After a second he figures out that Chris is waiting for the acknowledgement. Words come gradually, summoned back from velvet hiding-places. “Yes. I mean I know. Chris…”  
  
“Do you need me to stop? To let you come?”  
  
“I…don’t know. Not yet…oh, that, _te rog,_ please, sir…” Long fingers’ve folded around his dripping cock. Are stroking slowly, exquisitely drawn-out touches.  
  
“Almost, though?” Chris kisses the spot just above his navel, nuzzling beard-burn into it after. “Okay. Can you come if I tell you to? My hand on your cock, me talking to you?”  
  
“I think so, yes…” He can. His body feels wrung-out and incandescent and glowing. He can do anything, if Chris asks it of him.  
  
The bed’s pillowy and cloudlike and safe beneath his back, cradling his heated backside. The hotel room’s no longer cool and chilly but warm and topaz-bright, lamplight and scattered clothing and the scent of sex in the air. His lips’re sticky and taste of Chris, when he licks them. And they can do anything, himself and Chris and this hotel room.  
  
He moves a hand. Chris takes it, with the one of his own that isn’t otherwise occupied. Wraps fingers around his. Hard. “Okay. I’m here, I’ve got you, trust me to do this, okay?”  
  
“Of course, sir…” Chris’s hand’s speeding up, working his cock. The pleasure’s building, growing outward from that spot. Coiling gold down his spine. He whispers, “I want you,” and hears the smile when Chris answers, “I know.”  
  
One more kiss, not to his cock but right along the sensitive crease where hip meets thigh; Sebastian whines and lifts his hips, asking for more. Chris bites down, obliging and also warning; at the pressure of teeth, the bruise sucked into his skin, he subsides, falling back into that sublime serene space of capitulation. It’s good. Chris is here.  
  
“I am,” Chris says, and Sebastian wonders hazily whether he said that aloud, and in which language, he’s pretty sure Chris at least knows the French if not the Romanian…  
  
Chris is still talking. Still teasing his cock, strokes firmer now, faster. “I’m here and you’re mine and I’m going to make you come for me, from my hand on you, the way you want to, God, just look at you…that ass all red from taking a spanking, you covered in me, all mine, and you’ll walk around tomorrow looking so sweet and innocent, but you know and I know you’ll be feeling me everywhere, and you know you love that, don’t you, you need me to take you apart and give you what you deserve and tell you what you are, kid, and I will, you can call me sir when you’re kneeling at my feet and Daddy when I spank you and you can scream my name the way you want to when I fuck you in my bed with your legs over my shoulders, and I want you to come for me _now_ —”  
  
The hand on his cock slides just right and the permission rings in his ears and Chris’s other hand tightens on his, and Sebastian’s world goes white and blank and electric. Lightning. Thunder. Soundless and overwhelming as a diamond hurricane.  
  
He opens his eyes eventually, breathless, and finds Boston-harbor blue ones hovering worriedly inches away. “Sebastian?”  
  
“ _Dumnezuele,_ ” Sebastian manages exhaustedly, “oh dear God…”  
  
“Is…that…good?”  
  
“Yes!” At which point his overworked emotions give up and turn all the exhaustion into laughter and then tears, worn-out and coruscating and wonderful. “Yes, absolutely yes, _da,_ sorry, I just…”  
  
“You’re happy.” Chris reaches over to brush hair out of his face, lying stretched out beside him in the big comfortable bed with the thoroughly debauched sheets. “You look happy.”  
  
“I am.” Also clean. Evidently Chris has taken care of these things while he was surrounded by afterglow. “Thank you.”  
  
“But,” Chris says, eyebrows tugging themselves together, “don’t. You don’t have to thank me. I wanted to—I want you—didn’t you hear me? Could you hear me? At the end? I want this. With you. And we wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t pushed me into it. So—”  
  
Sebastian flinches, or would if he had bones and muscles instead of liquid sugar. “Sorry—”  
  
“No,” Chris says, “I mean you don’t have to thank me for this because it kills me to hear you say it, because I love you.”  
  
The universe goes completely silent.  
  
“Oh God,” Chris chokes out, lying frozen in place. Even that voice sounds petrified. “Did I…say that…out loud? I’m so sorry, oh God, I’m an idiot, it’s too soon, I know it’s too fucking soon, you don’t have to say it, don’t say it, I don’t know why I said—I mean I know why I said it, I mean it, I love you—oh God I said it again—”  
  
“Chris,” Sebastian attempts, and, when this fails to work, moves a finger with herculean effort and puts it over Chris’s mouth.  
  
Chris stops talking. Goes cross-eyed trying to look at the finger.  
  
“You love me,” Sebastian says. “I believe you. You once left tiramisu in my trailer before breakfast and you brought me a drink because you thought I’d like it and you listen when I talk.”  
  
“Of course I—”  
  
“So listen. _Te iubesc._ I love you.”  
  
“Oh my God,” Chris says, behind the finger.  
  
Sebastian grins. The world sparkles. Night sky beyond a crack in the curtains. Pillows knocked to the carpet. His jeans on the floor and Chris’s tie hanging drunkenly off a lampshade. “I told you that I know what I want. I want this. Everything you said. I love you. You can talk now, sir.”  
  
“Oh,” Chris says, laughing, delight coming up behind those eyes like dawn over elated oceans, “can I, I see how it is, you’re probably going to find your lip gloss later, too. I love you. So fuckin’ much. Always, kid.”  
  
“Always,” Sebastian agrees, stretching contentedly. His backside’s sore, but not terribly so; only the last couple might linger, and they won’t be bad. Chris was careful with him, after all.  
  
At some point they should shower, and he’ll get those lovely hands to rub lotion into the marks, but not just yet. They have most of the next day off; they’ll need to be on a plane, headed to the Los Angeles premiere, overnight, but that gives them the morning and afternoon to sleep and to play and to explore.  
  
Chris drapes an arm and a leg over him, pulling him into proper cuddling position, possessive and warm. Sebastian gives it ten seconds, then notes, “I also have cherry. The lip gloss. Sir.”  
  
“I am so spanking you for that tomorrow,” Chris mumbles sleepily into his hair. “Harder. If you’re not sore. And also that thing about you on your back in my bed while I fuck you, after. Sound good?”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian agrees, and curls more closely into Chris’s warmth, into the cadence of that beloved heartbeat under his ear. “That sounds entirely perfect to me.”


End file.
